The mental health issues facing children of veterans

If you think this is a new issue for families, it isn't. Australia did a study on children of Vietnam veterans.

'Morbidity of Vietnam veterans: suicide in Vietnam Veterans' children, supplementary report 1: a study of the health of Australia's Vietnam veteran community' analyses suicide patterns among Vietnam veterans' children highlighting time trends, age and sex distribution, location and method of suicide. It is a supplementary report to Morbidity of Vietnam Veterans: Volume 3 Validation Study which recommended that suicide in veterans' children be further investigated and the result drawn to the attention of the Vietnam Veterans Counselling Service. This report extend the knowledge about the health of Vietnam veterans and their families.

What year was it? 2000.

Collateral damage: The mental health issues facing children of veterans
CBS News
March 16, 2014

The VA spent almost $500 million last year for PTSD treatments for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. But their family members (a VA spokeswoman informed us by email) may receive counseling "if determined to be essential to the effective treatment and readjustment of the veteran."

Not all our casualties of war served overseas in combat. Some are children who never left our shores. Collateral damage, some might call it. Our Cover Story from Martha Teichner:

How many of these homecomings have you seen on television since we went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan more than a decade ago? How many children, looking into a returning soldier's eyes for the parent who went away?

These are supposed to be happy endings, happily-ever-after moments. But often they are anything but.

"Before his deployment, he was always kind of the fun parent," said 15-year-old Abigail Barton, who lives in Newburgh, Ind., Her father, Aaron Barton, is a veteran of the Iraq war.

"I just figured he'd come home and he'd start, just like he used to, start taking us to the park, playing basketball, getting ice cream, all that stuff," said Abigail. "And it just immediately changed, it was completely gone."

"Yeah, I was scared to go out of the house at the time," said Aaron. "Crowds make me nervous. I'm always still looking for snipers."

Barton was a specialist in the Army National Guard. His two deployments in Iraq, in 2005 and again in 2007, left him with injuries to his brain and spine, and post-traumatic stress disorder. He's able to work as a butcher for a local supermarket, as long as he works alone.
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